Let’s talk about fear; the fear that has been holding you back from doing what you really need to be doing in order to achieve your sales goals. This fear shows up in your day as many things, but most commonly you can identify it in the form of procrastination, distraction, and a borderline obsession with putting out fires.

If you’re thinking, “I’m not afraid of anything, I’m just really busy” I’m here to call you out on it. Does your “really busy” include stopping everything you’re doing to check that last email notification? Do you look at your phone every time it dings or vibrates? I’m willing to bet it does. I know mine sure did. I used to (and transparently sometimes still do) fall victim to my own “really busy” syndrome that seems to slip in and steal my day away. This “really busy” syndrome is a major challenge for productivity in general, but for a salesperson, it can be detrimental.

How can we avoid it?

Start each day off with clear goals. Identify which Key Performace Indicators (KPI) are most important to you and work them back into daily goals. For example, let’s say your monthly revenue goal is $50,000. The key metrics that impact achieving that goal are the number sales you close and the total value of those sales. Let’s say your average sale size if $5,000 (based on historical data). You would need 10 closed sales for the month to reach your goal ($50,000/$5,000 = 10).

So, now you know you need to close 10 sales this month. In order to close a sale, you must have a successful sales call. How many calls does it normally take for you to make a sale? If you’re not sure, start with a 10% conversion rate for planning purposes and you can adjust when you have more data on your own performance. a 10% conversion rate means you will close 1 out of every 10 qualified sales calls. Since we know you need to close 10 sales, this means you will need to have 100 sales calls (10 sales x 10 calls per sale = 100 calls).

Now we know that you’ll need to make 100 sales calls to reach your revenue goal for the month. If we assume 20 working days, that is 5 sales calls per day (100 calls/20 days = 5 calls per day).
For this example, we are assuming that lead generation is someone else’s role, but if it’s not you can even extend this back to identify the number of leads that are generated in order to secure a qualified sales call.

The ultimate purpose here is to map your goal backward into daily activities that you can control. Sometimes the goals that are set for us seem far out of reach initially. This can often be the case when looking at a goal mid-month. Usually, once they are broken down, your goals turn into manageable activities. $50,000 may seem like a stretch, but 5 sales calls per day are easily achievable.

Want to increase the number of sales conversations you close? What about increasing the average value of your sales? The key is in mastering the sales conversation. Download The 5C’s of Successful Sales Conversations cheat sheet to see your conversion rates and average sales value grow.